Friday, October 30, 2009

I just recieved an email from the associate director of the New York Institute for the Humanities at NYU asking if I would post information about their upcoming Halloween Wonder Cabinet event, curated by Lawrence Weschler. I do so with great pleasure, having already had plans to attend this wonderful (and free!) conference that will run from 11AM-9PM tomorrow (Halloween).

Lawrence Weschler, the curator of this day-long collection of illustrated talks, screenings, and multimedia presentations, is best known (at least to me!) as the author of the deeply influential Mr. Wilson's Cabinet Of Wonder, which recounts the mysterious and fascinating story of the Museum of Jurassic Technology in Los Angeles, and which went on to inspire countless numbers of pilgrims (myself included) to make the trek to experience the fabled museum in person. To my great excitement, I see that the "Mr. Wilson" behind the Museum of Jurassic Technology, David Wilson, will be featured in this lineup, where, the invitation tells us, he will evoke "the Russian mystical origins of the Soviet space program, subject of a trilogy of heartrendingly lovely short films." Having never heard the man speak before is reason enough for me to attend this event, but Weschler has provided plenty of other compelling reasons to spend your Halloween indoors, as you can see in the full line-up you will find below.

This looks to be a stellar event. Hope to see you there!

The New York Institute for the Humanities& the Humanities Initiative at NYUpresent an all-day

HALLOWEEN WONDER CABINETcurated by Lawrence Weschler

A day of illustrated talks, screenings, and multimedia presentations with Laurie Anderson, Michael Benson, Chandler Burr, Walter Murch, David Wilson and many others

Saturday October 3111 am till 9:30 pm

NYU's Cantor Film Center36 East 8th Street, NYC

Free and Open to the Public{on a first-come, first-in basis}

Every once in a while, Lawrence Weschler, the director of the New York Institute for the Humanities, and author, among others, of the Pulitzer-nominated Mr. Wilson’s Cabinet of Wonder (a work of “magic-realist nonfiction” arising out of an investigation of the premodern roots of the postmodern Museum of Jurassic Technology in Los Angeles), gets it into his head to contrive a day of sublimely odd, wonderflecked and just plain cool presentations, braided one after the next in a thematic order intermittently evident to himself, if no one else. This year, he proposes to do so on Saturday October 31, which is to say Halloween.

As you will see from the program below, the first half of the day will focus generally on the stellar, the planetary, the cosmological and the astronomic. Later in the day, presentations will begin to morph into a consideration of the experience itself of drop-jawed amazement. Toward the end of the procession, attention will turn to things somewhat more infinitesimal: the molecular basis of smell, insect camouflage, and (to round out the day, Halloween after all) the downright hallucinogenic.

11:10 amLAURIE ANDERSON, the celebrated performance artist and hipster sage, who will dilate on her days, a few seasons back, as visiting artist-in-residence with the good folks at NASA. (Note: She will be replacing the previously announced bead-artist Liza Lou in this slot.)

11:45 amFilmmaker and photographic archivist MICHAEL BENSON will be evoking the entire universe as seen from the point of view of the Hubble and other deep space observatories, subject of his latest book, Far Out, which in turn follows on from his last, the critically celebrated, Beyond, which took the same sort of survey of the photographic legacy of interplanetary space probes.

SESSION II

1:45 pmThe eminent film and sound editor WALTER MURCH (Apocalypse Now, The Unbearable Lightness of Being, The English Patient, The Conversation, etc.) will reveal a whole other side of his famously overbrimming curiosity, which is to say his excavation and systematic rehabilitation of a long discredited theory as to the placement of planets and moons in relation to the bodies around which they orbit, a formula which turns out to accurately predict 85% of such orbits, and which, when properly rejiggered, turns out to coincide with the formula for the Pythagorean octave (talk about the music of the spheres!).

3:00 pmDAVID WILSON, the MacArthur winning Jurassic Technologist himself, will evoke the Russian mystical origins of the Soviet space program, subject of a trilogy of heartrendingly lovely short films, a full decade in the making, currently coming to closure at the fourteen-seat Borzoi Theater atop his LA museum.

4:00 pmA rarely screened short, filmed during the last months of the Khrushchevite Thaw, in which the Soviet master PAVEL KOGAN trains a hidden camera on a succession of common Russians at the Hermitage Museum in Leningrad, as they gaze, positively awestruck, at Leonardo’s rendition of a Virgin and Child. That film will in turn be coupled with an uncanny set of recent shorts in which JOSH MELNICK trains a highspeed high-definition excruciatingly slow-motion digital camera upon wayfarers on the New York city subway, staring, positively dumbstruck, at nothing in particular.

5:00 pmA similar pairing, as in the above, this time two vantages of life on earth; the first in which the renowned avant garde filmmaker PETER HUTTON, of Bard College, trains his attention on the play of light dappling an Icelandic fjord; and the second in which MATT COOLIDGE, of LA’s Center for Land Use Interpretation (sister institution to David Wilson’s Museum of Jurassic Technology) trains his camera out the side of a helicopter for a jaw-dropping twenty-minute single-take survey of Houston’s petrochemical channel, arguably the most ecstatically industrialized swath of real estate in the world.

SESSION III

6:30 pmNew York Times scent critic CHANDLER BURR (The Emperor of Scent and The Perfect Scent: A Year inside the Perfume Industry in Paris and New York), singing the Nose Fantastic, which is to say plumbing the still mind-boggling mysteries involved in how it is that we smell anything at all (complete with blotter-swatch demonstrations).

7:30 pmEntomologist Extraordinaire MAY BERENBAUM of the University of Illinois, Champagne-Urbana (Ninety Nine Gnats, Nits and Nibblers; Bugs in the System; and The Earwig’s Tale: A Modern Bestiary of Multi-Legged Legends), who in honor of the evening’s festivities will consider Insects that Ape Shit (which is to say exceptionally novel, if creepy, insect disguises).

8:30 pmHAMILTON MORRIS, the disconcertingly enterprising young pharmacopia correspondent of Vice Magazine, will round out the evening by reporting on all manner of oddities (penis mushrooms, Amazonian frog sweat, etc.) that he has ingested and that you might want to avoid.

Times above are approximate at best.

* SPECIAL NOTE *{We hope as many of you as possible will be able to spend the day with us, feasting on the Wonder Cabinet in its entirety. However, should you be unable to stay for the whole program, we strongly recommend that you come for each session in full—you’ll understand why when you do.}

For further information, visit www.nyih.as.nyu.edu or contact the New York Institute for the Humanities at NYU at nyih.info@nyu.edu

You can find out more about the event by clicking here. You can find out more about Weschler's inestimable Mr. Wilson's Cabinet Of Wonder by clicking here. To find out more about the Museum of Jurassic Technology, click here.

Image: A micromosaic by Henry Dalton shown at the Museum of Jurassic Technology, found here.

Tuesday, October 27, 2009

Free this Sunday, November 1st? Looking for a way to nurse your Halloween hangover and ease back into the sad, post-halloween world? Well then! Why not join us for our first ever Dia de Muertos (Day of the Dead) Party at Observatory, where you will find for your delectation--among other things!--pan de muerto, champurrado, sugar skulls, music, Negra Modelo, traditional foods and crafts, an altar for communal contribution (see below), a Red Hook vendors taco truck supplying delicious and authentic foodstuffs (!!!), and much more. If you feel inclined to dress as a calavera–see bottom image, by José Posada–well then, all the better!

Co-hosted by myself, former Observatory lecturer and Morbid Anatomy guest-poster Salvador Olguin and professor Cristin Cash, its' sure to be a good time. You might even learn something! Full invitation follows:

Morbid Anatomy and Observatory formally request the pleasure of your company for our Dia de Muertos (Day of the Dead) party this Sunday (November 1).

Dia de Muertos is an annual festival celebrated in Mexico that seeks to ceremonially reunite the living with the dead. Traditional Day of the Dead ceremonies involve the preparation of an elaborate altar replete with flowers, candles and food that honor the dead to entice their return to the realm of the living. Mementos, relics and/or images of the dead are significant elements of altar decoration that both personalize and animate the altar as a site of memory and interaction.

For our Dia de Muertos party, we invite guests to bring an object or artifact that reminds you of a beloved thing no longer present to be placed on our community altar. The artifact can relate to a person, pet, idea, or anything lost that you would like to lure back to the land of the living, if just for one night.

This party was curated with the inestimable assistance and guidance of co-hosts Salvador Olguin and Cristin Cash.

Salvador Olguin’s work has been published in magazines both in Mexico and in the US. He is the author of Seven days, an interdisciplinary theatrical piece that celebrates the convergence of traditions and hybridism that characterizes Mexico’s fascination with mortality. He has worked extensively with Mexican cultural artifacts related with death, and he is currently performing research on the metaphoric uses of prostheses in literature and the visual arts, at New York University. He was born in Monterrey, Mexico and currently resides in Brooklyn.

Cristin Cash is Assistant Professor of Latin American Art History at St. Mary’s College of Maryland. Her research focuses on art and politics in ancient Maya architecture and representations of the urban landscape in contemporary photography from Mexico and Cuba. At St. Mary’s College, she teaches courses in the Art and Architecture of the Americas from ancient times to the present, World Architecture and Museum Studies.

You can find directions by clicking here. Please RSVP to morbidanatomy@gmail.com, just so we know how much stuff to prepare. Hope to see you there!

Monday, October 26, 2009

Just a wee reminder: Tonight, October 26th at 7:30 PM, former Observatory speaker and Death Reference Desk blogger John Troyer will be taking us on a virtual tour of the incredible Creation Museum in Petersburg, Kentucky, which I previously described in this recent MA post. There will also be artifacts from the museum available for your perusal. Hope to see you there!

Humans riding on the backs of Dinosaurs: A walk through the Creation Museum in Petersburg, Kentucky USA.by John Erik Troyer, Ph.D., Centre for Death and Society, University of BathDate: Monday October 26thTime: 7:30 PM (doors at 7:00 PM)Admission: $5.00

In May 2007, the twenty-seven million dollar Creation Museum opened in Petersburg, Kentucky. The museum is dedicated to representing a “young earth,” Christian explanation of the planet, which makes the known universe roughly 6-10,000 years old. Within the museum, visitors can view a large-scale Garden of Eden diorama, a fully loaded planetarium, and animatronic dinosaurs. Since opening, well over 835,000 people have visited the museum. The Creation Museum is a key player in what Troyer calls the American Science War and is part of an ongoing battle between advocates of Evolutionary Biology, Intelligent Design, and Creationism.

This presentation closely (and humorously) examines the relationships between Creationism, Intelligent Design, and Evolution in America by giving a pictorial tour of the Creation Museum in Petersburg, Kentucky. There will also be artifacts from the museum for your perusal.

Biography: Dr. John Troyer is the Death and Dying Practices Associate and RCUK Fellow at the Centre for Death and Society at the University of Bath. He received his doctorate from the University of Minnesota in Comparative Studies in Discourse and Society in May 2006. From 2007-2008 he was a Visiting Assistant Professor in the Department of Comparative Studies at The Ohio State University teaching the cultural studies of science and technology. Within the field of Death Studies, he analyzes the global history of science and technology and its effects on the dead body. He is a co-founder of the Death Reference Desk website and his first book, Technologies of the Human Corpse, will appear in late 2010.

Click here for directions to the event. Click here here to find out more about Troyer's former Observatory lecture, "'Bodies Embalmed by Us NEVER TURN BLACK!' A Brief History of the Hyperstimulated Human Corpse." You can find out more about the Centre for Death and Dying at the University of Bath--with which Troyer is affiliated--by clicking here. Click here to visit his blog, "Death Reference Desk", and here to find out more about the Creation Museum.

Thursday, October 22, 2009

The Morbid Anatomy Library will be holding open hours this Saturday, October 24th, from 1-6 PM. Feel free to come by and peruse the stacks, open some drawers, or have a chat. The library is located at 543 Union Street at Nevins, Buzzer 1E, in the Gowanus district of Brooklyn, New York; Click here to view map. You can also enter via the Proteus Gowanus Gallery; directions for that route can be found here.

I just came across this call for papers on the Medical Humanities blog that I thought might be of interest to some Morbid Anatomy Readers, especially as it seeks work from "a variety of disciplinary or interdisciplinary perspectives." The deadline for submissions is January 10th. I have posted it here in its entirety:

Dissecting anatomy – historical, cultural and ethical perspectives on teaching and research [deadline: 10 January 2010]. Themed issue of Medicine Studies. International Journal for the History, Philosophy and Ethics of Medicine & Allied Sciences, 2.1 (2010)

"A necessary inhumanity” is what Edinburgh anatomist William Hunter expected students to gain from the dissection course they went through as a “rite of passage” at the beginning of their university careers. Learning human bodily structure by performing hands-on dissections in the anatomical theatre has become a fundamental element of modern medical education, almost everywhere on the globe. Only recently, concerns have been raised over the pedagogical adequacy of using cadavers in first-year training. “Living and Virtual Anatomy” has been proposed as one possible alternative approach to students’ first encounter with the human body.

Historically, opportunities for “doing” anatomy were restricted by various and varying prohibitions and taboos. Apart from brief episodes in Antiquity, the interior of human bodies was not available for examination by physicians nor for the instruction of their pupils. When public dissections were first permitted, professors had prosectors demonstrate the accuracy of authoritative texts, long before empirically-based criticism of received opinions was encouraged. Ethical debates about the status of the dead human body have changed over time, between cries of desecration and calls for democratic knowledge, with different connotations in different cultures. This themed issue encourages papers dealing with questions such as the following:

How is the ontological status of the dead person affected by various forms of preservation and preparation, dissection and display?

What epistemological changes between “knowing” and “doing” anatomy are effected by different methods of teaching?

Is there a specific impact of different cultural environments on the generation, development, and reproduction of anatomical practices, and to what extent are these processes gendered?

Papers from a variety of disciplinary or interdisciplinary perspectives are invited.

For details of aims and scopes and formal aspects, including style sheet, etc., please consult the journal’s website Manuscripts need to be submitted online by 10 January 2010 at . Please, follow instructions provided on the site. For any preliminary inquiries, contact one of the issue editors:Samantha Regan de Bere (s.regandebere@plymouth.ac.uk);Alan Petersen (alan.petersen@arts.monash.edu.au);Rainer Brömer (rainer.broemer@gmx.de).

Illustration: John Bell (1763-1820) [anatomist; artist], Engravings of the bones, muscles, and joints, illustrating the first volume of the Anatomy of the Human Body. 2d ed.; London, 1804. Etching. National Library of Medicine. From the incomparable Dream Anatomy website and book.

I just received an email from Henning Lederer--an animator and digital artist--in which he detailed an art installation he recently produced based on Fritz Kahn's "Der Mensch als Industriepalast" (Man as Industrial Palace) poster of 1927. Above is a clip of one of the animations he created for the installation, as well as view of the installation. Here is what Lederer had to say about the project:

The intertwining of science, culture, art and technologyFrom the moment on that I got to know Kahn’s poster “Man as Industrial Palace” in 2006, I had the idea to animate this complex and strange way of explaining the functions of a body. I wanted to continue Fritz Kahn’s act of replacing a biological with a technological structure by transferring this depiction with the help of motion graphics and animation. In addition to the moving images, as a framework, I had the idea to create a cabinet for this work including a mixture of old and new technology. This new version of the “Industrial Palace“ is an interactive installation for the audience to interact with - and by this to explore the different cycles of this human machinery.

This project was produced within the MA Digital Arts Course at the Norwich University College of Arts. It took me about 6 months to complete all the different parts including the interaction and interactive device, the spatial solution, research and theory, and of course the animation.

Right now, I am back in Germany. On the one hand, I am trying to publish the two main MA projects and make people aware of them, on the other hand, I will continue working as a freelancer starting in Germany but with the main aim to give it a try in London.

Thanks, Henning, for sending this along!

You can find out more about Henning's project by clicking here. You can see more of his work by clicking here. Click here to see the wonderful poster that inspired it all.

Tuesday, October 20, 2009

Next Monday, October 26th at 7:30 PM, former Observatory speaker and Death Reference Desk blogger John Troyer will be taking us on a virtual tour of the incredible Creation Museum in Petersburg, Kentucky, which I previously described in this recent MA post. There will also be artifacts from the museum available for your perusal. Hope to see you there!

Humans riding on the backs of Dinosaurs: A walk through the Creation Museum in Petersburg, Kentucky USA.by John Erik Troyer, Ph.D., Centre for Death and Society, University of BathDate: Monday October 26thTime: 7:30 PM (doors at 7:00 PM)Admission: $5.00

In May 2007, the twenty-seven million dollar Creation Museum opened in Petersburg, Kentucky. The museum is dedicated to representing a “young earth,” Christian explanation of the planet, which makes the known universe roughly 6-10,000 years old. Within the museum, visitors can view a large-scale Garden of Eden diorama, a fully loaded planetarium, and animatronic dinosaurs. Since opening, well over 835,000 people have visited the museum. The Creation Museum is a key player in what Troyer calls the American Science War and is part of an ongoing battle between advocates of Evolutionary Biology, Intelligent Design, and Creationism.

This presentation closely (and humorously) examines the relationships between Creationism, Intelligent Design, and Evolution in America by giving a pictorial tour of the Creation Museum in Petersburg, Kentucky. There will also be artifacts from the museum for your perusal.

Biography: Dr. John Troyer is the Death and Dying Practices Associate and RCUK Fellow at the Centre for Death and Society at the University of Bath. He received his doctorate from the University of Minnesota in Comparative Studies in Discourse and Society in May 2006. From 2007-2008 he was a Visiting Assistant Professor in the Department of Comparative Studies at The Ohio State University teaching the cultural studies of science and technology. Within the field of Death Studies, he analyzes the global history of science and technology and its effects on the dead body. He is a co-founder of the Death Reference Desk website and his first book, Technologies of the Human Corpse, will appear in late 2010.

Click here for directions to the event. Click here here to find out more about Troyer's former Observatory lecture, "'Bodies Embalmed by Us NEVER TURN BLACK!' A Brief History of the Hyperstimulated Human Corpse." You can find out more about the Centre for Death and Dying at the University of Bath--with which Troyer is affiliated--by clicking here. Click here to visit his blog, "Death Reference Desk", and here to find out more about the Creation Museum.

Monday, October 19, 2009

I just stumbled across a new and extensive reference to the Cabaret du Néant ("Tavern of the Dead")--the fully immersive, death-themed nightclub which graced Paris during the fin de siècle. The Cabaret (which careful readers might remember from this recent Morbid Anatomy post) was a popular, macabre, and spectacular attraction which re-translated the phantasmagoria of the 18th Century into decadent nightclub for the turn-of-the-nineteenth-century Parisian sophisticate.

The reference, which I came across on the Voyages Extraordinaires blog, is sourced from the 1899 publication Bohemian Paris of To-day, by William Chambers Morrow, and features a very detailed eyewitness account of a visit to the Cabaret. This is probably the closest we 21st century folk will ever get to a virtual visit (unless some inspired film-maker or event-planner is reading this right now?) so I have posted the excerpt here in its entirety:

As we neared the Place we saw on the opposite side of the street two flickering iron lanterns that threw a ghastly green light down upon the barred dead-black shutters of the building, and caught the faces of the passers-by with sickly rays that took out all the life and transformed them into the semblance of corpses. Across the top of the closed black entrance were large white letters, reading simply:

C A F E D U N É A N T

The entrance was heavily draped with black cerements, having white trimmings, such as hang before the houses of the dead in Paris. Here patrolled a solitary croque-mort, or hired pall-bearer, his black cape drawn closely about him, the green light reflected by his glazed top-hat. A more dismal and forbidding place it would be difficult to imagine. Mr. Thompkins paled a little when he discovered that this was our destination, this grisly caricature of eternal nothingness, and hesitated at the threshold. Without a word Bishop firmly took his arm and entered. The lonely croque-mort drew apart the heavy curtain and admitted us into a black hole that proved later to be a room. The chamber was dimly lighted with wax tapers, and a large chandelier intricately devised of human skulls and arms, with funeral candles held in their fleshless fingers, gave its small quota of light.

Large, heavy, wooden coffins, resting on biers, were ranged about the room in an order suggesting the recent happening of a frightful catastrophe. The walls were decorated with skulls and bones, skeletons in grotesque attitudes, battle-pictures, and guillotines in action. Death, carnage, assassination were the dominant note, set in black hangings and illuminated with mottoes on death. A half-dozen voices droned this in a low monotone: "Enter, mortals of this sinful world, enter into the mists and shadows of eternity. Select your biers, to the right, to the left; fit yourselves comfortably to them, and repose in the solemnity and tranquility of death; and may God have mercy on your souls!"

A number of persons who had preceded us had already pre-empted their coffins, and were sitting beside them awaiting developments and enjoying their consommations, using the coffins for their real purpose, tables for holding drinking-glasses. Alongside the glasses were slender tapers by which the visitors might see one another.

There seemed to be no mechanical imperfection in the illusion of a charnel-house; we imagined that even chemistry had contributed its resources, for there seemed distinctly to be the odor appropriate to such a place. We found a vacant coffin in the vault, seated ourselves at it on rush-bottomed stools, and awaited further developments.

Another croque-mort a garcon he was came up through the gloom to take our orders. He was dressed completely in the professional garb of a hearse-follower, including claw-hammer coat, full-dress front, glazed tile, and oval silver badge. He droned, "Bon soir, Macchabees! [This word (also Maccabe, argot Macabit) is given in Paris by sailors to cadavers found floating in the river] Buvez les crachats d'asthmatiques, voila des sueurs froides d'agonisants. Prenez done des certificats de deces, seulement vingt sous. C'est pas cher et c'est artistique !"

Bishop said that he would be pleased with a lowly bock. Mr. Thompkins chose cherries a l'eau-de-vie, and I, une menthe.

"One microbe of Asiatic cholera from the last corpse, one leg of a lively cancer, and one sample of our consumption germ!" moaned the creature toward a black hole at the farther end of the room. Some women among the visitors tittered, others shuddered, and Mr. Thompkins broke out in a cold sweat on his brow, while a curious accompaniment of anger shone in his eyes. Our sleepy pallbearer soon loomed through the darkness with our deadly microbes, and waked the echoes in the hollow casket upon which he set the glasses with a thump.

The tapers flickered feebly on the coffins, and the white skulls grinned at him mockingly from their sable background. Bishop exhausted all his tactics in trying to induce Mr. Thompkins to taste his brandied cherries, but that gentleman positively refused, he seemed unable to banish the idea that they were laden with disease germs.

After we had been seated here for some time, getting no consolation from the utter absence of spirit and levity among the other guests, and enjoying only the dismay and trepidation of new and strange arrivals, a rather good-looking young fellow, dressed in a black clerical coat, came through a dark door and began to address the assembled patrons. His voice was smooth, his manner solemn and impressive, as he delivered a well-worded discourse on death. He spoke of it as the gate through which we must all make our exit from this world, of the gloom, the loneliness, the utter sense of helplessness and desolation.

As he warmed to his subject he enlarged upon the follies that hasten the advent of death, and spoke of the relentless certainty and the incredible variety of ways in which the reaper claims his victims. Then he passed on to the terrors of actual dissolution, the tortures of the body, the rending of the soul, the unimaginable agonies that sensibilities rendered acutely susceptible at this extremity are called upon to endure. It required good nerves to listen to that, for the man was perfect in his role. From matters of individual interest in death he passed to death in its larger aspects. He pointed to a large and striking battle scene, in which the combatants had come to hand-to-hand fighting, and were butchering one another in a mad lust for blood. Suddenly the picture began to glow, the light bringing out its ghastly details with hideous distinctness.

Then as suddenly it faded away, and where fighting men had been there were skeletons writhing and struggling in a deadly embrace. A similar effect was produced with a painting giving a wonderfully realistic representation of an execution by the guillotine. The bleeding trunk of the victim lying upon the flap-board dissolved, the flesh slowly disappearing, leaving only the white bones. Another picture, representing a brilliant dance-hall filled with happy revellers, slowly merged into a grotesque dance of skeletons; and thus it was with the other pictures about the room.

All this being done, the master of ceremonies, in lugubrious tones, invited us to enter the chambre de la mort. All the visitors rose, and, bearing each a taper, passed in single file into a narrow, dark passage faintly illuminated with sickly green lights, the young man in clerical garb acting as pilot. The cross effects of green and yellow lights on the faces of the groping procession were more startling than picturesque. The way was lined with bones, skulls, and fragments of human bodies.

"O Macchabees, nous sommes devant la porte de la chambre de la mort!" wailed an unearthly voice from the farther end of the passage as we advanced. Then before us appeared a solitary figure standing beneath a green lamp. The figure was completely shrouded in black, only the eyes being visible, and they shone through holes in the pointed cowl. From the folds of the gown it brought forth a massive iron key attached to a chain, and, approaching a door seemingly made of iron and heavily studded with spikes and crossed with bars, inserted and turned the key; the bolts moved with a harsh, grating noise, and the door of the chamber of death swung slowly open.

The walls of the room were a dead and unrelieved black. At one side two tall candles were burning, but their feeble light was insufficient even to disclose the presence of the black walls of the chamber or indicate that anything but unending blackness extended heavenward. There was not a thing to catch and reflect a single ray of the light and thus become visible in the blackness.

Between the two candles was an upright opening in the wall; it was of the shape of a coffin. We were seated upon rows of small black caskets resting on the floor in front of the candles. There was hardly a whisper among the visitors. The black-hooded figure passed silently out of view and vanished in the darkness.

Presently a pale, greenish-white illumination began to light up the coffin-shaped hole in the wall, clearly marking its outline against the black. Within this space there stood a coffin upright, in which a pretty young woman, robed in a white shroud, fitted snugly. Soon it was evident that she was very much alive, for she smiled and looked at us saucily. But that was not for long. From the depths came a dismal wail: "O Macchabee, beautiful, breathing mortal, pulsating with the warmth and richness of life, thou art now in the grasp of death! Compose thy soul for the end!"

Her face slowly became white and rigid; her eyes sank; her lips tightened across her teeth; her cheeks took on the hollowness of death, she was dead. But it did not end with that. From white the face slowly grew livid... then purplish black... The eyes visibly shrank into their greenish-yellow sockets... Slowly the hair fell away... The nose melted away into a purple putrid spot. The whole face became a semi-liquid mass of corruption. Presently all this had disappeared, and a gleaming skull shone where so recently had been the handsome face of a woman; naked teeth grinned inanely and savagely where rosy lips had so recently smiled. Even the shroud had gradually disappeared, and an entire skeleton stood revealed in the coffin. The wail again rang through the silent vault: "Ah, ah, Macchabee! Thou hast reached the last stage of dissolution, so dreadful to mortals. The work that follows death is complete. But despair not, for death is not the end of all. The power is given to those who merit it, not only to return to life, but to return in any form and station preferred to the old. So return if thou deservedst and desirest."

With a slowness equal to that of the dissolution, the bones became covered with flesh and cerements, and all the ghastly steps were reproduced reversed. Gradually the sparkle of the eyes began to shine through the gloom; but when the reformation was completed, behold! there was no longer the handsome and smiling young woman, but the sleek, rotund body, ruddy cheeks, and self-conscious look of a banker. It was not until this touch of comedy relieved the strain that the rigidity with which Mr. Thompkins had sat between us began to relax, and a smile played over his face, a bewildered, but none the less a pleasant, smile. The prosperous banker stepped forth, sleek and tangible, and haughtily strode away before our eyes, passing through the audience into the darkness. Again was the coffin-shaped hole in the wall dark and empty.

He of the black gown and pointed hood now emerged through an invisible door, and asked if there was any one in the audience who desired to pass through the experience that they had just witnessed. This created a suppressed commotion; each peered into the face of his neighbor to find one with courage sufficient for the ordeal. Bishop suggested to Mr. Thompkins in a whisper that he submit himself, but that gentleman very peremptorily declined. Then, after a pause, Bishop stepped forth and announced that he was prepared to die. He was asked solemnly by the doleful person if he was ready to accept all the consequences of his decision. He replied that he was. Then he disappeared through the black wall, and presently appeared in the greenish-white light of the open coffin. There he composed himself as he imagined a corpse ought, crossed his hands upon his breast, suffered the white shroud to be drawn about him, and awaited results, after he had made a rueful grimace that threw the first gleam of suppressed merriment through the oppressed audience. He passed through all the ghastly stages that the former occupant of the coffin had experienced, and returned in proper person to life and to his seat beside Mr. Thompkins, the audience applauding softly.

A mysterious figure in black waylaid the crowd as it filed out. He held an inverted skull, into which we were expected to drop sous through the natural opening there, and it was with the feeling of relief from a heavy weight that we departed and turned our backs on the green lights at the entrance...

You can visit the original post on Voyages Extraordinaires by clicking here; click here to peruse the entire online version of Morrow's 1899 Bohemian Paris of To-day on Archive.org.

Friday, October 16, 2009

The current issue of Time Out New York features a nice little article about the Morbid Anatomy Library by friend-of-the-library Liz Day. You can check it out in its entirety (along with many great photos of the library by Eric Harvey Brown, as seen above) by clicking here.

Coincidentally, the library is open this Saturday and Sunday (October 17 and 18th) from 1-6 PM as part of the Gowanus-wide open studios weekend (aka A.G.A.S.T.). So if you are free and in the neighborhood, please do stop by for snacks, drinks, a perusal of the stacks, and a quick hello! Hope to see you there.

To find out more about the open studios weekend, and get directions to the library, click here.

Sunday, October 11, 2009

Next weekend, October 17th and 18th, please join the Morbid Anatomy Library and Observatory as we join dozens of other Gowanus-based galleries and artist studios in opening our spaces to the public for the 13th annual Gowanus Artists Studio Tour, or "A.G.A.S.T." I am told that these open studios are very well attended and lots of fun. Plus, we'll be offering snacks, beverages, and pretty things to look at. Hope to see you there!

Here are the full details:

13th annual Gowanus Artists Studio Tour (A.G.A.S.T.)Saturday October 17th and Sunday October 18th1-6 PM543 Union Street at Nevins, BrooklynFree and Open to the Public

R or M train to Union Street in Brooklyn: Walk two long blocks on Union (towards the Gowanus Canal) to Nevins Street. 543 Union Street is the large red brick building on right. Go right on Nevins and left down alley through large black gates. Gallery is the second door on the left.

F or G train to Carroll Street: Walk one block to Union. Turn right, walk two long blocks on Union towards the Gowanus Canal, cross the bridge, take left on Nevins, go down the alley to the second door on the left.

You can find out more information about A.G.A.S.T., and get a full list of participants, by clicking here. You can find out more about Observatory and the exhibition now on view by clicking here.

Friday, October 9, 2009

Congratulations, Hunterian Museum, for so deservedly being rated "Museum of the Month" by The Londonist last month! Its really nice to see a medical museum being singled out for its excellence by a mainstream publication.

You can read the review, and see more images, by clicking here. You can visit the Hunterian's website by clicking here. Thanks to Phoebe of the Wellcome Library for drawing this to my attention.

A fascinating discussion by this local author about the extraordinary history of a particular kind of obsession--the desire to own the skulls of the famous, for study, for sale, and for public (or private) display.

The after-death stories of Franz Joseph Haydn, Ludwig Beethoven, Swedenborg, Sir Thomas Browne and many others have never before been told in such detail and vividness.

Fully illustrated with some surprising images, this is a fascinating and authoritative history of ideas carried along on the guilty pleasures of an anthology of real-after-life gothic tales.

Beginning dramatically with the opening of Haydn’s grave in October 1820, cranioklepty takes us on an extraordinary history of a peculiar kind of obsession. The desire to own the skulls of the famous, for study, for sale, for public (and private) display, seems to be instinctual and irresistible in some people. The rise of phrenology at the beginning of the 19th century only fed that fascination with the belief that genius leaves its mark on the very shape of the head.

You can find out more information about the event and the bookshop here. You can find out more about the book by clicking here.

Thanks to Ann Bachand for alerting me to this event and the existence of this book!

Photo Courtesy of the Otis Historical Archives, from the book's website, which can be found here.

Here are some wonderful images from the history of quack medicine and nostrums, via the Ephemera Assemblyman blog. There are many more great images (also captions and information) to be found in the full post, which you can visit by clicking here. I also urge you to click on images to see much larger, more detailed images.

I'm usually no fan of high fashion, but this 12-foot-tall zoetrope (see above) constructed to showcase Temperley London’s Spring 2010 collection at New York and London's Fashion Week festivities is pretty darned great, and a wonderful use of arcane media for contemporary purposing.

Tuesday, October 6, 2009

I am celebrating my return to the luxury of internet-in-the-home with this lovely photo found on the ever-rich National Museum of Health & Medicine's Flickr page. The caption reads: "(Anatomy, comparative.) Australian bear or koalas. Phascolarctos cinereus. [Bones.] Reeve 1780."

You can visit the museum's Flickr page by clicking here. Click in image to see much larger version.

Friday, October 2, 2009

Tonight--Friday October 2nd--RePop in Brooklyn will be hosting an art opening for artist Scott Graeber, whose artworks deal with anatomical imagery and explore issues of mortality. The exhibition will feature his frescos and several anatomical casts (as seen above), as well as a selection of actual jarred specimens. The show will be held at RePop, at 68 Washington Ave, from 7:30 to 11, Brooklyn, accessible from the G train. The show will be up until November 1.

Following is more about Graeber's work, from his artist's statement:

Since the age of eighteen every job that I have had has centered around death and the disassembly of the human body. Over twenty years of such work has pushed me into a permanent melancholy. My art, however, has flourished under these circumstances, even as the rest of my life (and body) gradually dissolves.

Out of desperation I turned to art. I made three-dimensional collage works that were labeled as perverted or grotesque. After a number of group and solo shows this mode of working ceased to satisfy me, and I began a study of fine art. Several years of figurative study have brought me to a point where I am satisfied that I can translate my ideas to clay or canvas.

Recently I read an article about sperm whales and learned that the whales are gouged and disfigured about their heads by the food they eat (giant squid) and from goring each other with their teeth in sex spats. For weeks I have walked around looking at everyone as an assemblage of wounds, as if the battles of their lives were scars wrapped around their faces. Every maneuver of avoidance, every slight glance, wringing of wrists, all evidence of failed loves, of lovers consumed.

Art is the high point of a society. Without it, we are nothing. Nothing, that is, but a collection of scars and defects waiting to be re-cycled. Its our art allows us to transcend this darkness. It lives beyond us on our temple walls, books, tapestries and in the dreams of our descendants. When its creator is forgotten, art proves its true magic. It lives on even as we do not.

This opening is sure to be amazing. I would be there if I could! Hope you can make it!

More on RePop--including directions--and the opening can be found here.